Design Iterations Research

    For the development of my data visualization project, I'm conducting research into important components of the brief. One component of the brief which needs to be considered is the way in which I can dynamically display data in an interesting way.

    One important component is the camera which would be used as a input/navigation device for the audience. My design would need to react to the movements of the user, in processing a project using mouse commands can easily be changed to react to eye movements, which is good because the sketches I have been doing in Processing during the workshops have used quite a lot of mouse commands.  I would need to undertake some testing to see how the camera would react to large volumes of people.

In the brief it states that my visualization must relate to digital media concept which is significant to the twenty first century either from media theory or media practice. They can range from subjects such as demonstrating data compression, data storage or even the process of trending on social media.

For example this trendmap extracts data from twitter to determine if people are feeling negative or positive in a particular geographical location. Data visualizations such as this can be used by people to identify trends. In the example below you can see that the people living in the center of Melbourne are more negative than the people living on the outskirts, this can be identified by the green and red areas on the map.

During the process of learning how to program in processing I have seen various examples of data visualizations. For example in the Lynda.com tutorials I learnt about the "Nightingale Rose diagram" which isn't actually a data visualization graphic but is in fact an information visualization graphic.



There are two clear distinctions which can be established between an information visualization graphic and a data visualization graphic. An information visualization graphic is designed to convey clear information to it's audience and can only be interpreted one or two ways, an example of an information graphic is the "Nightingale Rose diagram" which clearly displays the causes of death of soldiers each month in the year of 1855. The design of  of this graphic would of initially began with the collection of "large data" over a twelve month period and then the data is plotted on this diagram in a way in which it can be used by people.

This "requirements gathering" process is a process which I conducted when I designed the poster for the foyer as it involved me conducting research into a particular space which would ultimately have an impact on the design of my interactive display.